Queen Move

Way to connect the dots.

“I’m in perimenopause, yeah.”

“But you…you’re not even forty.” Mama slams a hand on the table. “Pesticides.”

“Um...huh?”

“It’s those pesticides and those GMAs and—”

“I think you mean GMOs.”

“Yes.” Mama points her fork at me. “Them. And steroids. All in our food, in our water.”

“You’re not wrong, but are you sure there’s no family history?”

“No one I remember. Girl, my mother still had pads under the sink at sixty.”

Between a grandmother still menstruating into her twilight years and a sister who has birthed five children from her actual body, I’m feeling reproductively inadequate to say the least.

“So what does this mean for children?” Mama asks, frowning. “You can still have them, right? You’re so young.”

“I haven’t had a period in four months. Without one of those, no kids. So I’m working with a homeopath to at least get that back, and then I can decide.”

“Decide? Well, how much time do you have to decide?”

“Year and a half. Maybe two.” My shrug is more careless than I am. “I can’t just reproduce on demand. If and when I can get my period on track, I need someone to reproduce with, and I have no prospects. And I’m not sure I want to drop everything to have kids right now. If this window closes and I want kids later, lots of babies are up for adoption and need homes. I don’t need a sperm donor for that.”

“I know you’ve never felt pressure to have kids,” Mama says. “Or to get married, for that matter, but I think you’d make a wonderful mother, if it means anything to you.”

“That does mean something, and thank you, Mama.”

“You keep doing what the doctor says and we’ll get through this.”

The weight that’s been heavy on my shoulders since Dr. Granden first uttered the word “perimenopause” feels that much lighter with every person I share it with.

First Kayla. Then Mona. Now Mama.

I’m beginning to think I should have come home a long time ago.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ezra

“I love them!” Noah says, grinning at the tickets Aiko left for him.

“You do, honey?” she asks, her expression concerned on the Skype screen. “They’re passes we can use whenever. We’ve been to the aquarium so often, I thought a trip to Nashville for the planetarium might be fun. And I know you’re really into the stars right now.”

“It’s great,” he assures her. “And the other things were awesome, too.”

Aiko asked me to take a bag full of birthday gifts she’d left to his bedroom first thing this morning.

“I wish I was there.” She blinks hard, and I can tell she’s trying not to cry. She doesn’t want Noah to know. “But so many people are coming to your party today.”

“Yeah, and we’ll jump on the trampoline,” Noah says. “You should see it, Mom. It’s the kind with a net.”

“Your mom actually helped pick it out,” I interject. “She wanted to make sure she saw it before she had to leave.”

“You did?” Noah asks.